throw it all on like sour cream

to professor mclaughlin, who entirely by himself makes up the laughable linguistics department at usu, there is no "audience," only a customer. there is no "rhetoric," there's just sales pitch. i've blogged about this before.

in my rhetoric classes we were handed a simple definition: the art of influencing people through symbolic means.

no bullets. no handcuffs. I think blackmail counts, but probably those disparaging looks you get from your mum don't.

so is that the key to making a difference? influencing people?

even if that person is just you?

well, influence implies power but does not necessarily presuppose results. your influence may or may not be felt. probably it will only be felt so far. it might not make any difference to them at all. your high-tech interactive flash advertisements might not move them to do or buy anything.

making things happen transcends rhetoric, I think. the saying if you want it done right, do it yourself, that's where the making things happen gets real. it gets done. it happens because you make it. no symbols. no proposals. you've got to roll up your sleeves, right?

I see first-hand evidence of this in my current employers. gorgeous CEO/front-woman shae doesn't just sit around owning her catering company. she makes it happen. this on top of all her other projects is rather phenomenal. of course she doesn't do it alone... there are the people who fit the building with lights and ovens, the people who paint the walls, the people who stand behind the buffet line and smilingly serve. each one of them makes a difference. and it isn't through rhetoric. it's through doing stuff.

rhetoric is doing stuff, sometimes. like when you write letters to your congressmen, or vote, or compose symphonies. whether or not that makes a difference depends a lot on other people.

but when you're painting a wall, the wall can't help but get painted, can it?

and the bugs you squash taking a hike up a mountain, they can't really help it either.

there's a line somewhere, way down underneath my preconceptions and judgemental surface, way down underneath my hunger and my worries about the future, way down underneath the doubt and what-ifs, and some people, with their rhetoric, get across it. some things don't. maybe some things (football, i think) never will.

it'll take a lot of introspection before I'll ever be able to say what gives some things the influence they have on me and other things no influence at all.

the line is somewhere in you too. it's where you make yourself into more than just a hole in the universe, more than a thing that is itself just because it isn't anything else.

you have no say about anyone else's line, even if you do have a gun in your hand.

so what?

there is time enough in the day to compose symphonies and get off your couch and hike a mountain, to write letters and to go rake your neighbor's leaves, if you want. what difference will any of it make?

the difference it makes to you is all that matters. everything else you're powerless to help.

[postcript]
ms. sierra's blogpost of today goes nicely along with one of my many tangled points. she says, "We all know we can't simply slap motivation on another person. All we can do is design an experience to help them motivate themselves."